Dramatic Simplicity

I think I would define the best writing style as I would the best music style: a piece of music is great if it stops you short and makes you listen to it, and a writing piece is great if it stops you short and makes you read it.

It seems to contain a simplicity in beauty, but more a dramatic simplicity in beauty.

Barber's Adagio for Strings does this. Bach is sacred and beautiful, yet if you straighten out his complicated Baroque beauty you seem to find a simple, dramatic, Romantic line. The best Romantics show this kind of simplification of Bach.

Writers who do this sort of thing do their work for the reader, simplifying, clearing up, illuminating, yet with beauty, and with strong, beautiful, dramatic simplicity which stops you short and makes you read it.

Perhaps all great art and culture does this, including philosophy and religion.